Thursday, February 15, 2007

Guitar Lesson: Five Ways To Learn The Notes On The Guitar

By: Peter Edvinsson

To find your way around the fretboard of the guitar is veryimportant. It will help you in guitar improvisation, sightreading, and in understanding chords and more. In this guitarlesson we will explore five ways to learn the notes on theguitar fretboard.

How much do you need to practice?

A couple of minutes a day with one of these exercises will helpyou improve your skills in finding the notes. In this guitarlesson we will focus on the fretboard and not the actual guitarsheet music.

Learning to read guitar sheet music will be much easier when youmaster the notes on the guitar keyboard. I have divided thisarticle in five lessons that you can alternate between until youmaster the guitar fretboard.

Guitar lesson 1

Learn the basic notes, the notes of a C major scale (the whitekeys on the piano) on every string. Let's test this on the firststring on your guitar. The first note is an E. You will find Fon the first fret. G on fret three. A on fret five. B on fretseven. C on fret eight, D on fret ten and the next E on frettwelve.

The sixth string on the guitar is an E too. It's just twooctaves lower but you will find the same note names on thisstring on the same frets two octaves lower.

On the second string you will find the notes on the followingfrets:

fret 0-B, 1-C, 3-D, 5-E, 6-F, 8-G, 10-A, 12-B

On the third guitar string you'll find the following notes:

0-G, 2-A, 4-B, 5-C, 7-D, 9-E,10-F, 12-G

I guess you can figure out the names of the notes on the nextstrings by yourself but here they are in case you will doublecheck. The fourth string:

0-D, 2-E, 3-F, 5-G, 7-A, 9-B, 10-C, 12-D

The notes on the fifth string or the A-string:

0-A, 2-B, 3-C, 5-D, 7-E, 8-F, 10-G, 12-A

I would suggest that you concentrate on one string at a time andlearn the names as you play the notes on your guitar maybe bysaying the note names aloud as you play.

Guitar lesson 2

Learn a specific note on all strings. This is a great way tolearn the notes and quite amusing too. Let's use the note G.You'll find it on the third fret on string six. Where can youfind the note G on string five? Right, on fret 10.

The G notes on the strings from the sixth string to the firstare on the following frets:

3 10 5 0 8 3

You can make an exercise of this by playing the G notes fromstring six down to the first string and back again. Try thiswith other notes too. For example E.

If you devote a couple of minutes a day on this exercise youwill soon be able to play the sequence of strings fast, spottingthe notes without effort.

Guitar lesson 3

Learn the names of the notes on a fret. We can start with theopen strings starting from the sixth string to the first. Thenames will be:

E A D G B E

Now, play the notes on the third fret in the same order. At thesame time try to say the names of the notes aloud. I will helpyou this time only by writing the note names down:

G C F Bb D G

Try this exercise on different frets and say the names of thenotes aloud.

Guitar lesson 4

Learn the notes in a chord. Play any chord and name the notesaloud from string six to string one. This guitar exercise willalso help you to understand how the chords are built.

Guitar lesson 5

In this guitar lesson you will use your ability to create randomnotes on the guitar. As you play notes on your guitar at randomyou also say the note names aloud.

Play in an even pace, just fast enough to make this exercise achallenge for your mind so your mind will concentrate on thetask and not wander off.

All of these small guitar lessons can be used together with acompanion. One playing the notes on the guitar and the othersaying the note names.

As I mentioned before I think it's best not to overdo theseexercises. Choose one of the guitar lessons and work a couple ofminutes a day on mastering the exercise.